Sport: Hunters Trapped

“I was trailing a buck, when suddenly the wind shrieked and almost instantly the sky turned black. Great puffy black clouds scudded overhead. Startled, I hastily turned toward the edge of the Park where my bunch was to have met me. I hadn’t come a quarter of a mile before the blizzard let loose. It was as though the whole country had been blotted out. The snow cut at my face and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I ran into trees and fell over roots. Finally, I fired my rifle into the air three times. I nearly jumped out of my boots when I heard three answering shots, so close they seemed to be almost at my side. . , . We built a fire . . . chopped branches from the trees . . . made a leanto. About six o’clock another hunter straggled into camp. He was almost done up but he had a good supply of food. . . .”

Some 900 hunters, out for black-tailed deer, were strung over the slopes of Big Horn Mountains, near Sheridan. Wyo. last week when the blizzard struck early one afternoon. About 700 hunters were able to get down from the hills in time.

Fireguards, mountain rangers and volunteers rescued nearly 250 of the others in the next five days. Clambering through 20-ft. drifts to an altitude of 8,500 ft., where the temperature was 10° above zero, they found the hunters bitten by frost and half starved, huddled in small groups around fires. Six days after the storm had broken only three of the trapped hunters were still missing. Separated from their parties when the blizzard broke, they had almost certainly been frozen to death.